German and American armor came to being via very different routes. The Germans spent a lot of time and energy in the 30's coming up with really good shit. A lot of which got tested in Spain. Everyone else just kinda sat on their ass. Then in the late 30's the other countries went "oh shit" and started working on their designs. But they were already behind so for them it wasn't "just" about designing good shit it was about designing "good shit that we can assemble really quick".
So the Germans went to war with great stuff that was complicated to build. As a result assembly lines were slow and it wasn't long before the Russians and later the US were seriously outproducing them. All designs are about compromise. Much of the Allied hardware wasn't as spiffy, but it was easy to build in a hurry. Also, the fact that it was easy to build in a hurry played to another of our strengths, our industrial might. Much easier for us to turn a washing machine mfr into a tank mfr if we have a simple tank design. Much harder if the tank design is really tricky.
I'm no expert on the AK nor the M16. But it's worth noting that only one of them was originally designed as an Infantry weapon and it wasn't the M16. The M16 had to go thru some design iterations before it was much good.
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